I long argued that doing more in Afghanistan meant more influence, even if that became a hard thing to measure or prove. I am pretty sure that doing less will mean less influence, although losing the UNSC vote will be overdetermined, so I will again lack good evidence for my claim (good thing the editor and peer reviewers of my blog posts are pretty forgiving).

I think that realizing that modern peacekeeping is really hard is fine, that perhaps none of the missions that were proposed made sense or were too dangerous or were too unlikely to succeed. The government may be making a good decision, but it will probably message it poorly. Yes, Canada will be contributing, but not nearly as much as those are putting their own people at significant risk. So, let's not get too high falutin about this new PKO effort.

Of the campaign promises Trudeau made, this was perhaps the most pie crusty of the promises--easily made, easily broken. I doubt that voters will care much in 2019 that this promise was broken. Others will matter more, such as electoral reform. So, yeah, perhaps a good decision with poor messaging and few real lasting consequences domestically. Woot?

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Stephen M. Saideman

Intro

Greetings! I am a political scientist, specializing in International Relations, my research and teaching focus on ethnic conflict and civil-military relations. I watch way too much TV, and I like movies as well so I tend to write about both and find IR stuff in pop culture. I rant alot about American politics and sometimes about Canadian politics. I like to take ideas I once learned a long time ago and apply them to whatever strikes my fancy.